Saturday, 1 October 2011

So the past 2 weekends I've attended 2 separate events, neither of them in Cork but hey, you can't have everything. First things first however and it's time to talk about NWG's event, NWG 2011. This story begins on a the Friday, with a car full of guys off to the east. Wexford in particular. Seeing as 2 of us had never been to Gorey before, we thought it counted as "discovering Ireland" so we listened to this song, on repeat, for 3 hours up, and 3 hours back.

We genuinely still don't know the words, not one of us. In the car were Chris "I like Grappling" Icke, a SkibbWargamer who would be using my broken Space Wolves for the weekend, "Prod" Rob Gleasure, a square-baser from Cark, like and Craig "Craig" Murphy, a judge and all around user of Microsoft Excel and myself.

As previously stated in my last blog post I was rocking the Necrons for the weekend and upon our eventual arrival at the CORRECT hotel (thanks a lot, Rob) was happy to see someone else using "glance on 6" shenanigans. The army belonged to John "Scarab Lord" Stowe but on the Friday night Paul "Packers Suck" Quigley was behind the wheel. It was a straight swap with the two lads switching lists and having it out like a pile of heroes. Paul's list being venoms, ravagers, wychs and those forgeworld thingies. You know the ones, with the guns and stuff. John brought 30 scarabs, 2 tombstalkers(forgeworld monstrous creatures) and a monolith. Quigley wasn't feeling the 'crons and lost. Nothing to do with the Necrons I'm sure. At this point I was informed that Cian, SWG's president, was unable to make it to Wexford. This was doubly unfortunate as he was in possession of the monolith I was to use. The good people of NWG were kind enough to let me proxy(legends). However, with my WYSISYG and painting scores out the window my plan of finishing all my painting that night changed.

To this.

So then it was time to drink many whiskeys and catch up with all the guys I hadn't seen in a while. Milling around I started watching some of the challenge matches taking place. There was a very awkward moment when I saw Jay "Godless-Mimicry" Mckeown. I had to pretend like I wasn't avoiding him when he came over to say hi. It's really hard to talk to people after they catch you blatantly cheating in a game. Curse whoever told him at Moocon my Death Company didn't have fleet. Don't worry though, I totally passed it off as an accident.

Am..... they also get back up on a 4+

We came to a bit of an "understanding" by ways of if we were to play that weekend, all of his Razorbacks had the fleet special rule. I'm really glad we didn't play that weekend so I can pretend like I would have let him do that. Those who know me well know I would never do anything for fun that would sacrifice winning because I'm a Necron playing, win at all costs, fleeting, cheating expletive. So after imbibing many Jim Beams, beers and some lovely, lovely whiskey from John Stowe I was in flying form. Myself and Chris were holding up the SkibbWargamers tradition of never going to bed on the Friday of a Convention able to see correctly without squinting. By this point Rob had gone off to play with some of the fantasy boys into the wilds of Gorey town. This was a shame as I was hoping to use NWG(which started as a squarebase only event) to ingratiate myself with those not as lucky as myself and who, through no fault of their own, aren't cool enough to play pew pew lazers.

Pew pew

Now I'm not saying I was without fantasy players to shout at. Derek "Jarvis" Mitchell and Nigel "Brooklyn" Kavanagh were there as well as Colin "You want terrain? Yeah, cool, whatever. Bandon" Cullinane and Mark "Nic Cage" Keaveny who both decided to play fantasy for some mad reason. So after the shouting and drinking we struck off for a place to sleep. Nigel was mental, wait, I mean nice enough to let about, at a rough estimate, 800 gamers sleep in his house. So it was a walk to the other end of Gorey for us. On the way we stopped off a pizza place. Now I'm no engineer but if I were a pizza place and I sold a ridiculous sized pizza, I would at least make the doors big enough to accommodate someone leaving with said pizza. Would I still have bought the 30 inch pizza had I thought about the logistics more? ..... probably.

So there I was, essentially trapped in a pizza place, with a pizza so big that a Stormraven couldn't turboboost across it. After handing out pizza to all the lads I was finally free of my Italian, doughy prison and it was off to Nigel's for more beer. Upon arrival I realised I had ingested far too much alcohol to work out how to use an airbed with a built in pump on my own. Queue a half three in the morning call to my girlfriend that took way longer than it needed to. Armed with the knowledge of how to properly use the air bed, knowledge acquired from a confused and sleepy girlfriend I duly borrowed an electric pump off Jarvis and pumped the the thing in about a minute.

Do not use in event of drinking.

Saturday morning was ........ fun. Luckily I had the presence of mind on Friday while in Tesco to stock up on multi-packs of Lucozade. I'm a genius. Off to the hotel we go, via a centra where I bought a whole pile of ice cream because hey, who said ice cream can't be for breakfast. Upon arrival at the hotel I was met with two things, one good and one bad. The good was the live projector feed of the Ireland Australia rugby match(wheeeeeeew we won) and the bad thing was seeing all the people who traveled down in the morning. Screw you guys and your not having hangovers. Sake. Two of these people were Warheads Peter "Arms Dealer" Scott and Tristram "Food poisoning" Hills. It was nice seeing the guys and we had time for a good catch up as everyone was very lackluster about starting as the match was pretty class. This also gave myself and John Stowe time to construct a fantastic monolith for me to use for the weekend. The sheer amount of minutes and masking tape that went into it's constructing was believable and left me with the eventual winner of "best alternative model".

That's right. It's okay to be impressed.

I already knew who my first round was against. It was Necron versus Necron. Myself versus John Stowe. Looks like he had helped to build what would be his undoing muhahahahahahaha. I have many reasons for challanging John: 1) Who does he think he is playing Necrons? They're mine, leave them alone. Go play with your Wolves or Templars, leave the broken lists to the professionals. 2) I owe him one after the crap he pulled at Skibbcon 2 with the Whiskey(that report will come, eventually) and 3) he's a massive bunny so I expected a big leap after caning him because, you know, it's not like he ever wins. There was a big flaw in my plan, he was playing Necrons, they're broken. The rulespack said that this was meant to be spearhead killpoints but due to some technical difficulties we were told to roll as in the rule book. Guess what we rolled? Spearhead, killpoints. This was a very enjoyable game, as all my games against Mr. Stowe, for many reasons. Here are just a few: All of the deep striking Monoliths, all of the time. Table service. Deepstrike mishaping Tomb Stalkers. Table service. The Deceiver fluffing all his attacks in a big way. Table service. Everything getting back up on a 4, not to mention all the glancing on sixes going on. Table service and last but not least scarabs are badass. We were chatting and having the craic so much we had to end the game on turn 5 even after cutting into our lunch time. Game was a straight 15 - 5 win to Mr. Stowe.

Broken

Chris managed to meet his nemesis list, venom spam being driven by Mr. Dark Eldar himself, Paul Quigley. He first foray into tournament Wolves ended at the wrong end of a 20 - nil. With 2 losses the SWG were ready for round 2. Nowhere to go but up, or you know, continue at a consistent level of bad. My second game had me up against fellow munsterite Daniel "Hive-dar" Cassidy from Limerick CITAY(which I will note is an actual city unlike some places. I'm talking about towns like Skibbereen or Kilkenny). Daniel's main draw to NWG2011 was his ability to roll out his Forgeworld for the event. He had Hornets, Wasps, Bees, Grasshoppers and every other insect you can think of. Fortunately for me we were playing the one objective each game, he had only one troop actually able to hold an objective, wraithguard, the rest being veichles. Unfortunately for me, they were wraithguard, hanging out with Eldrad, hiding behind a massive bit of LOS blocking terrain. Class.

The Deciever decided to make up for sucking in the previous game and ran across the board to murder some scoring troops. He weathered all, and I mean ALL of the fire from Daniel's army with 4 wounds intact and dove head first into a big pool of Wraithguard. He must have gotten overly confident because after killing a whole wraithguard he had four saves to make after some pretty on fire dice from Daniel. It's okay though. I have 4 wounds left and would need to fail all 4 of these saves to die. Oh wait.... he's dead. It's okay though, because a dead C'tan blows up so I could hopefully wipe them out here. Nope. None of them died. Class.

YOU SUCK!

In the end I was able to deepstrike my monolith onto his objective, dropping a lord and his unit next to it as well and end up winning 14 - 6. On the note of Gypsying, a big shout out goes to Philip "Gypsy King" Johnston for being a legend and bringing Kroot Mercenaries to NWG2011. Chris managed to get himself a 20 nil in his second game. Stupid broken Space Wolves.

Game 3 had myself paired up against Patrick "11ft tall Bloodthirster" O Donnell. He gets the name for the fantastic model he used to show his greater Daemon. He was using an amazing Chaos army with Forgeworld and Beserkers. Patrick told me about how he was giving up on 40k for a while as he started into college this year, it's unfortunate as he's a great guy to play. I did feel bad as straight away it was apparent my dice were on fire, and not in the "someone was stupid enough to give Eoin petrol" way. His gorefeaster went down to a single squad of destroyers, my monolith immobilized his Landraider straight out of the gate. As well as me killing his defiler and immoblising his impaler walker thing(not it's actual name). He did take it really well but with the dice as they were there was nothing he could do. The game ended in a 16 - 4 win to me. Chris, funnily enough ended up playing his dad, Frank and his renegade guard list.

Putting the "Greater" in Greater Summoned Daemon

So that was the end of all the games on the Saturday and it was more beer and then off to Gorey town. It was obvious that I was drunk as I was totally okay with going to get pizza even after my 30 inch escapade the night before. It was a very nice dinner with some nice company. By nice company, I mean the place was too full so 5 of us had to eat separately from everyone else. Managed to dodge all the nerds, score! After this we headed off to the pub. On the way we had a little game of street American football. I had to act like I was really crap so that the other guys wouldn't feel bad. It was embarrassing for them but hey, what'll you do?

I'm basically a drunk Tom Brady.

The rest of my night was spent trying to work out my fantasy list with Rob. I don't want to say too much right now but I will say one thing: Full Command. After the pub it was back home to bed. Sleepy times and games the next day. Although I was not looking forward to Sunday as I would be unable to drink. Terrible times. So it turns out that my fourth game was against Peter Scott. Peter plays the ever popular Lash-Oblits, Chaos list. We were playing pitched battle, one objective each. I managed to get first turn and Peter set up his Landraiders in the relative open, his Daemon Prince in reserve and 2 Termies squads and one pile of Oblits deep-striking. First thing my monolith does is drop a blast on Land raider one. Boom! Dead Landraider. God, I love my monolith. The rest of my guns unloaded into land raider 2. If you are not aware, Necrons GLANCE ON SIXES! Leaving Landraider number 2 with no weapons and stunned.

Pictured: Peter's Second Landraider

This was a nice, hungover game. My monolith immobilized itself about 4 inches from his objective...... which was fun. That would have made my job a whole lot easier. My lord and his squad deep-striked(deep-struck?) near his objective and got charged by a large plauge marine squad. The survived 3 rounds of combat, until in the final round they failed a leadership nine test and were sweeping advanced. Bringing the game to a straight 10 - 10 draw. A bit unlucky for me but being fair to Peter, had the game ended in turn 5 he would have won, if it ended at turn 6 it would have been a draw. Peter's a really good player, who knows his list really well, I think his main mistake was underestimating the damage my army could do to his Landraiders from such distance. Stupid Broken Necron.

The fifth and final game of the weekend had me up against Frank O Donnell's beautiful, and I emphasise the beautiful part, Defenders of Vraks list. Frank was my opponent in round three's father and I saw the resemblance straight away. He was a pleasure to play. It did help that he already had an intimate knowledge of the Necron Codex thanks to his relationship to Ralph "Nightbringer" Risk. Frank's forgeworld army had loads of fantastic things that I'd never seen before. Immobile gun batteries. Units with random leadership(D6 + 4) and psykers that turn into daemons on a perils. Fantastic stuff altogether. It was Dawn of War, killpoints and with a bit of luck I managed to grab first turn. This was a big deal for me as all of his guns would have to move on, losing him a turn of shooting(Guard - Shooting = Fun times for Necrons). All that luck became moot when Frank seized the initiative....... stupid Guard. All his guns moved on and those who could shoot, shot at the Deciever(who was deployed 24 inches up the board) doing no damage. My turn 1 the Deciever advanced towards Frank's army and made a heavy weapons team take a 25% casulty test. This was my first experience of random leadership. Frank rolled a 3 to make their leadership 7. He then rolled an 8 to make them run off the board. Result!

Big girls.

Turn 2 and every gun in Franks army shoots at my C'tan bringing him down to a single wound and got finally taken out by a hunter killer missile from the outflanking sentinels from all the way across the board took him out. It was pretty awesome. The game went on for 5 turns but Frank just had way too many killpoints and my army is pretty mobile so it could avoid all his guns. Game ended as a 15 - 5 to me. Had a brilliant time playing Frank, his army is awesome and he's a great guy to play.

After game 5, I had 3 wins, 1 draw and a loss. Pretty good going for the "broken" Necrons. John Stowe managed to best me with 4 wins and a loss(at least my loss was to Necron). All in all the Necrons managed to rock NWG and prove that we don't even need a new codex(this is a joke, we really need a new codex). Jan "WAAAAAAAAAAGH" Karnowski managed to win the event with his 400 orks, Paul Quigley came second with his Dark Eldar and in third place Peter Scott. Tristram managed to grab "Best General" and I even got a prize thanks to the love of my life, Donal "Pinball Wizard" Carroll. Thanks babe. I'm pretty sure some prizes were given out to the fantasy boys for something but I drifted off at the first mention of "Level 4".

Look, I just like special characters.

NWG2011 was a fantastic event and my congratulations and thanks go to Nigel and Derek for hosting us, Darragh "I play 1850pts" Cullen for running the 40k event, Craig and all the lads for working all those spreadsheets. Also big thanks to my opponents John, Daniel, Patrick, Peter and Frank for the great games. Also to everyone else who attended and helped me have a brilliant time(and that's the most important thing, my enjoyment) Paul, Tristram, Rob, Phil, Jay, Jason to name just a few.